Comments John, at Facebook, linking to "Sanders rolls out ‘Bezos Act’ that would tax companies for welfare their employees receive" (Marketwatch).
ADDED: From John: "It’s called the 'Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act,' or Stop BEZOS Act. Because politicians expressing their anger at Jeff Bezos for being the richest person in the world is more important than thinking about how our laws will actually affect the poor." But what if he's richest because middle class people are subsidizing his business by helping his employees cover their living expenses? Should we not feel ripped off?
September 6, 2018
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 227 of 227I read a fascinating essay about the current concept of "greed" that asked why greed is now always defined as an immoral desire for excess MATERIAL goods,
While interesting I don't think this is the most effective way to analyze the left's version of "greed". The left claims everyone who opposes their policies is greedy. But if they want my money and I want my money their own preference has to be characterized as more greedy than my desire to keep it since I have at least some right to it.
Greed is hardwired. Can't eliminate it, it must be channeled. That's why blended economies work best.
This conclusion doesn't follow from the statement. Economic freedom channels greed the best because it requires voluntary exchange. "Blending" means taking choice away from the money holder which creates the agency problem. With it a business doesn't have to convince you their service is worth your money, it just has to convince the government its service is worth your money. And since the government is largely staffed by people who believe your money shouldn't be yours in the first place that's not a particularly high bar.
Howard seems to under the impression that some how political greed is more noble than private greed.
In howards economy the invisible hand has a whip in it.
No greater gift to America than Kamala Harris becoming the Democrat nominee in 2020.
Amazon's choices are 1) cheap labor or 2) automation. There is no room at amazon for expensive labor.
So, Sanders is really just putting more people into government dependency.
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
-Thomas Sowell
Bernie is guaranteed to understand any economic issue precisely backwards.
Remember when Trump got the tax cuts passed, Pelosi let the mask slip and talked about Trump taking away "our" money--ie gov money, as if it was their right.
Anybody who can't understand the difference between the Super-rich like Bozo who runs Amazon and is worth $87 BILLION - and the average guy who owns a gas station or a golf course is a dumbshit.
But that's why Bozo is worth $87 Billion. The dumb suckers who never learn who their friends are.
But hey YOU CAN be worth $87 Billion - if we just cut the capital gains tax on Rich folks. Honest.
There is no economic concept so immoral to me than the supposed "Tax Expenditure" of graciously allowing me to keep my own money. "When a man earns bread by the sweat of his brow, and the bondsman eats it."
The trolls opining on economics is rich. They are only qualified to opine on their own painful hemorrhoids.
Trumpit: "The trolls opining on economics is rich."
All puns intended, no doubt.
Bernie Sanders.
His only "real job" ever was working on a commie commune.
And the commies fired him!!
For being too lazy!!
LOL
You could never in a million years conjure that one up on your own!
The communists. Making those of us who didn't end up in mass graves and massive Gulags or suffer from incredible deprivation laugh since 1917.
Did you happen to catch LLR Chuck's economics hero Paul Krugman asserting Kavanaugh is illegitimate due to Trump only ekeing out an electoral college win?
LOL
What a bunch of buffoons LLR Chuck has climbed into bed with!
"Cook said: Your experience does not encompass all of reality. The couple of people I've know who've been on welfare really needed it, and what they got was barely enough to meet their immediate needs.
Both of them stopped taking welfare when they were in situations that allowed them do do so."
I've known many people on welfare and was on it myself for a short time, but none of us really needed it. Oh sure, we were poor, but we were not incapable of convincing someone to pay us to do something they needed done, or even to ask a friend for help if needed. We just prefered the easier route. I doubt the couple you knew on welfare would have starved without the government check.
"Huge numbers of "hard workers" wanted to work during the Depression - but there were no jobs.
This is not the depression. In fact, it is just about the most opposite period in history from a depression.
"Look, you can be all full of ambition and willing to work hard etc. - but the jobs have to be there.
And not be taken by some illegal alien who'll work for LESS than Minimum wage.
Illegal aliens do not work for less than minimum. That's just as illegal as for citizens, and illegals have lots of lawyers to take their cases. It's just not a real thing that happens at real companies.
Illegal aliens do not work for less than minimum. That's just as illegal as for citizens, and illegals have lots of lawyers to take their cases. It’s just not a real thing that happens at real companies.
Yeah, I am betting that the illegals who work in the stables get time and half for overtime too! What is it about “illegal” that you don’t understand.
“But what if he’s richest because middle class people are subsidizing his business by helping his employees cover their living expenses? Should we not feel ripped off?”
This is a dilemma inherent in the nature of the current reality. To the extent you provide certain kinds of welfare benefits to those who work, you lower the wages and benefits an employer must pay.
If you refuse to provide those benefits to anyone who works, you keep a lot of people from working.
If you keep people from working, increase the cost to the taxpayers by providing the benefits AND providing the recipients additional welfare to keep them alive.
To escape this situation, you must either abolish capitalism, or abolish the welfare system.
But facing this reality makes people feel bad, so we will continue to flounder around, trying to have welfare, capitalism, and no ‘subsidy’. And we won’t succeed. Which will also make us feel bad. Perhaps one day the human species will learn to face reality regardless of how, it makes us feel. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
The reality here is that socialists don't want poor people to get jobs
Poor people with jobs often become not-poor people
Then they stop voting for the Left
The Left wants them miserable and voting D, not happy and possibly voting R
The only ones we should be pissed off at are the politicians trying to keep poor people unemployed
Blogger rcocean said...
Anybody who can't understand the difference between the Super-rich like Bozo who runs Amazon and is worth $87 BILLION - and the average guy who owns a gas station or a golf course is a dumbshit.
Actually, Bezos is worth more like $220 billion (11mm shares of Amazon at @$2,000per)
Bezos probably invested less money in Amazon than he would have in buying a reasonably sized gas station and C store. ISTR that he put about $50m into the business originally.
He is worth $220bn and the gas station owner is worth $500m (if that) because:
He had a somewhat unique idea. (BFD. People have unique ideas all the time)
Gas stations and golf courses are safe, established, known businesses and gas stations and golf courses pay safe, established, known returns.
He acted on it (That is one of the two keys to success)
He worked at it to make it successful.
Nothing you or I couldn't do.
So how come he did it and you or I didn't?
He also took, and takes, next to nothing out of the business. I think he draws $3mm/yr in salary. No stock options, he's held the same 11mm shares for more than 20 years now. There are 20-30.
The stock pays no dividends so his whole income is that salary.
All his eggs are in one basket. I suspect that he keeps a pretty close eye on that basket.
So perhaps I am a dumshit. Perhaps you see some other differences between him and me or you?
John Henry
Blogger Browndog said...
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
-Thomas Sowell
Someone mentioned Bastiat earlier and I second that recommendation. I recommend particularly "The Law" but I also really like his "Economic Sophisms"
In The Law, Bastiat asks a similar question: Why would it be morally wrong for me to hold a gun to Bezo's head (our yours, or Bernie's etc) and take his money?
Yet few people seem to have any qualms about using the govt to hold a gun to Bezo's (et al) head and take his money to give to them.
Why is it moral for the state to do what it is immoral for an individual to do?
Full text here: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
You can buy Economic Sophisms via the portal (You will help both Ann and Jeff)
John Henry
He had a somewhat unique idea. (BFD. People have unique ideas all the time)
Gas stations and golf courses are safe, established, known businesses and gas stations and golf courses pay safe, established, known returns.
He acted on it (That is one of the two keys to success)
He worked at it to make it successful.
Nothing you or I couldn't do.
So how come he did it and you or I didn't?
What is simply staggering to me is that Sears, where I worked for a while in college, should have done it.
They had all the infrastructure. They had a catalog operation they had run for 100 years.
They shut down the catalog operation the year Amazon began.
All they had to do was figure out how to put the catalog online and set up a billing and payment operation.
I knew Sears people. some of them funded my college scholarship.
They just died of stupidity. What a shame.
This is a dilemma inherent in the nature of the current reality. To the extent you provide certain kinds of welfare benefits to those who work, you lower the wages and benefits an employer must pay.
This is simply not true. Employers pay the amount for which people are willing to do the job. The circumstances of the job seeker aren't relevant to the employer or the job seeker when it comes to negotiating a wage. If we didn't have welfare benefits poor people would live in bunkhouses and go without medical care like they did before we had government benefits. But they wouldn't make a single dollar more.
If you really want to help unskilled people in the US you can't allow de facto unrestricted immigration, which swamps the low end of the labor market and reduces their bargaining power. Labor shortages are the only way to generate constant dollar increases in pay. I don't understand why supply and demand curves make intuitive sense to people except when it comes to labor. The mechanism is the same for a person and a box of soap.
This is why both parties will run on about taxpayer support for billionaires, but when donations from those same billionaires roll in it's to secure relaxation and non-enforcement of our immigration laws, and to buy press organs such that anyone who points this out can be made a racist unperson.
He also took, and takes, next to nothing out of the business. I think he draws $3mm/yr in salary. No stock options, he's held the same 11mm shares for more than 20 years now. There are 20-30.
The stock pays no dividends so his whole income is that salary.
This can't be true. there is no way he could afford to pay for Blue Origins on $3 million a year.
Bezos sells off about a billion dollars worth of stock every year.
This is the sort of thing you propose just to get the underlying idea talked about.
I hope!
I am going with 'stupid'. Bernie Sanders can be a stemwinder of a speaker, but that doesn't make him smart. One would not put Harry Hill into Mensa either, and yet he was quite the demagogue as well.
Proposing crappy, damaging, and badly inciteful ideas into the general population is part of how we came to this pass.
It is one thing to float horrible ideas in the safety of a group of well educated, hand selected students picked for their subtlety of mind.
It is another to propose horrible ideas like Communism and Post Modernism to the general public.
Bernie Sanders does not practice any kind of wisdom, judgment or intellectual hygiene.
"Bezos sells off about a billion dollars worth of stock every year."
Which would be taxed...unless there's a 'loop hole' where the sale of that stock can be rolled over into another investment (which is entirely possible: after having to abide by the capital gains tax laws, the smart thing would be to get a *good* tax lawyer to interpret that bloated crap and find the reduced tax liability path).
@tim in vermont:Yeah, I am betting that the illegals who work in the stables get time and half for overtime too! What is it about “illegal” that you don’t understand.
Illegals work under fake documents. They get SS and Medicare tax withheld just like you.
It is perfectly legal for an employer to hire an illegal who presents fake documents provided he doesn't know the documents to be fake. It is illegal for an employer to scrutinize an illegal's documents too closely, and he has to let an illegal offer as many different documents as he wants until they get one the employer doesn't know is fake. It is illegal for an employer to demand documents before the illegal is hired.
If the employer does not do this, he has committed "document abuse", or possibly "national origin discrimination", and lots of lawyers paid for by the government are standing by to help sue that employer under Title VII.
Our laws regarding work authorization are toothless by design. So yes, millions of illegals are working under I-9s, paying taxes through their withholding, and the IRS knows perfectly well whose SSN they are using (but won't tell). And so yes, illegals are getting paid time and a half because they are working on the books. They are doing so illegally, but they're not very likely to get caught and the employer has no legal liability whatever. He did what the law said to do.
Canada has real laws and there are a negligible number of illegals able to do any work there.
Skookum, the problem with idiot State-Cultists denouncing "greed" is that none of them can define it or give you a logical explanation of why it is bad. (Of course, religionists of any kind have difficulty giving a logical explanation for any of their dogma.) "Greed" has become what Tom Wolfe once called a "vacuum word:" i.e., a word that has lost any intrinsic meaning and now can be used however the speaker or writer wants it to be used. One man's "greed" is another man's rational self-interest. And as David Friedman once wrote: "Greedy capitalists make lots of money. Virtuous statists steal it."
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